Alina Mungiu-Pippidi Jana Warkotsch Beyond the Panama Papers. The Performance of EU Good Governance Promotion The Anticorruption Report 4 written by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi Ramin Dadašov Sindy Natalia Alvarado Pachón Christopher Norman Simone Dietrich Eliska Drapalova Miroslav Beblavý Emília Sicáková-BeblavᡠMartin Mendelski Digdem Soyaltin Justine Louis Jana Warkotsch Max Montgomery Barbara Budrich Publishers Opladen • Berlin • Toronto 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of Barbara Budrich Publishers. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from Die Deutsche Bibliothek (The German Library) The information and views set out in this publication are those of the author(s) only and do not reflect any collective opinion of the ANTICORRP consortium, nor do they reflect the official opinion of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the European Commission is responsible for the use which might be made of the following information. © 2017 by Barbara Budrich Publishers, Opladen, Berlin & Toronto www.barbara-budrich.net ISBN 978-3-8474-0582-5 (Paperback) eISBN 978-3-8474-0405-7 (e-book) Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Ein Titeldatensatz für die Publikation ist bei Der Deutschen Bibliothek erhältlich. Verlag Barbara Budrich Barbara Budrich Publishers Stauffenbergstr. 7. D-51379 Leverkusen Opladen, Germany 86 Delma Drive. Toronto, ON M8W 4P6 Canada www.barbara-budrich.net Jacket illustration by Bettina Lehfeldt, Kleinmachnow, Germany – www.lehfeldtgraphic.de Contents For a More Effective Link Between EU Funds and Good Governance 7 1. EU Democracy Promotion, Conditionality and Judicial Autonomy 34 2. Spain: Roads to Good Governance? How EU Structural Funds Impact Governance across Regions 46 3. Slovakia: The Impact of EU Good Governance Aid 2007–2013 58 4. Romania: Europeanisation of Good Governance Where and why does it fail, and what can be done about it? 68 5. Turkey: The Paradoxical Effects of EU Accession 79 6. Egypt: The Failed Transition 89 7. Tunisia: Great Expectations 104 8. Tanzania: The Cosmetic Anticorruption 116 Acknowledgements 128 5. Turkey: The Paradoxical Effects of EU Accession DIGDEM SOYALTIN1 Rather than achieving good governance in Turkey, the formal institutional change promoted by the EU has failed to eliminate the informal institutions of clientelism and patronage. Instead, the ruling party has been instrumental in using anticorruption measures to gain more control over state structures and replace old patronage structures with new ones, all the while enlarging on some neoliberal reforms in the economy. Recent deteriorations of press freedom and judiciary independence have also weighted down on control of corruption. The origins of EU’s anticorruption policy in Turkey Corruption has been a pervasive problem in Turkey for many years Yet, a decisive anti- corruption policy was formulated only after the EU and other external donors started to chal- lenge the problem of corruption more prominently in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis Facing increasing pressure, the incumbent government mostly formed by the Justice and Development Party (Turkish acronym, “AKP”) responded to the EU’s demands for change and expanded the legal framework with regard to fight against corruption The conditional incen- tives of the EU membership process, which became more credible when Turkey received the EU candidacy status at the Helsinki Summit in 1999, had a considerable impact on the adoption of domestic anticorruption reforms Given the impressive number of reforms adopted to comply with the EU’s rules, Turkey was considered “a textbook example” of the EU’s transformative power (Kirişçi 2011) Yet, the EU accession process lost momentum after 2006 in terms of push- ing Turkish government to comply with the EU rules (Noutcheva and Düzgit 2012) Combating corruption is an integral part of the EU’s enlargement policy (Vachudova 2009, pp 49–50) The legal and administrative changes required by the EU’s ambitious reform agenda incur adaptation costs for target governments Domestic change becomes more likely when the EU’s conditional incentives are credible enough to compensate the costs of adaptation (Börzel and Risse 2003) As shown in the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEs), membership conditionality, as the strategy of reinforcement by reward, have enabled the EU to induce govern- ments to comply with its conditions and adopt certain policies (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005) to fight against corruption Another instrument used by the EU to support the CEECs in their transition to democracy and good governance was financial and technical assistance Especially provided the financial assistance by the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) was actively linked to the fulfilment of certain democratic criteria, thus creating further stimulus for the massive reforms (Smith 2004) EU assistance was also geared towards enhancing capacity of state institutions along with strengthening of media and civil society, which was thought in turn to be able to pressure the government for further change (Börzel and Pamuk 2012) In this regard, the free media, strong civil society and active citizens can put constraints on those who have opportunities to spoil public resources (Mungiu-Pippidi 2015) Since the civil society is traditionally too weak in Turkey to put domestic pressure on its government, the reform process of sensitive issues, including the fight against corruption, 1 Assistant Professor Istanbul Kemerburgaz University, Turkey, didemsoyaltin@gmail com 79 was primarily driven by the credible incentive structure of the EU (Düzgit and Çarkoğlu 2004, Müftüler-Baç 2005) Moreover, the capacity-building programmes of the EU provided technical and financial assistance for the anticorruption agencies that are necessary to facilitate reform Corruption has been a long-standing problem for Turkey (Baran 2000) Although the scope and form of corruption has evolved over the years, the patronage networks that had historically been part of Turkish society dating back to the Ottoman Empire largely sustained and ena- bled certain groups of individuals to have access to resources and appropriate gains throughout Turkey’s modern history (Buğra 1994) The drastic increase in the use of particularistic politics throughout the 1980s and 1990s disproportionately benefited capital groups with close relations and affiliations with high-level representatives of the government and weakened the regulatory capacities of the existing state bureaucracy and judiciary (Güneş-Ayata 2010) Coupled with in- effective civil society organisations and poor media environment, the weak governance structure further promoted institutionalisation of complex networks of mutual dependence and favour trading (Heper 1973, Kalaycıoğlu 2005) Yet, the absence of independent strong anticorruption controllers left too much discretion to the executive and gave rise to favouritism, eventually lead- ing to corrupt practices that went unreported or investigated for many years 2 Until the early 2000s, prior to the launch of the reforms as part of the EU accession process, corruption did not used to be considered an urgent problem by Turkish politicians (Şarlak and Bali 2008) However, corruption was listed as one of the most serious and acute problems in several surveys of the public at that time (Adaman, Çarkoğlu and Şenatalar 2001) Experts also placed Turkey among the group of countries perceived as the most corrupt in Europe In the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) published by Transparency International (TI) Turkey never scored more than 3 8, and generally fluctuated around a figure of 3 in the late 1990s and in the beginning of the 2000s (Yaşar 2005) Given the high level of corruption, the EU has paid greater attention to fighting corruption in Turkey (Adaman 2011, Doig 2012, Ulusoy 2014) After the EU granted Turkey candidacy status in 1999, the European Commission consistently stated that corruption had been a very serious and widespread problem in Turkey In this context, EU officials strongly supported the implementation of the structural economic reform programmes agreed upon with the IMF and the World Bank (European Commission 2003, p 125) and induced Turkish authorities to take more specific legal and institutional measures with regard to strengthening governance and fighting corruption Accordingly, Turkey had been obliged to develop management and financial control systems, ensure transparency in public procurement and political funding, and support capacity building for law enforcement and judicial authorities, as well as civil society organisations and media 3 Conditionality